


built this town on shaky ground

by carrythesky



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelings Realization, Grief/Mourning, Karen decides to hike the AT à la Reese Witherspoon, Road Trips, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, post-dds3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-09-25 04:50:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17114810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrythesky/pseuds/carrythesky
Summary: Here’s a thing Karen has never said out loud — she wants an after for herself, too. She just never pictured it looking like this.----Karen goes looking for closure, and finds something else along the way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [garglyswoof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/garglyswoof/gifts).



> Happy Kastle Christmas to the lovely [garglyswoof!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/garglyswoof/pseuds/garglyswoof) This is a road trip fic set post-DDS3, combined with [ejunkiet's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejunkiet/pseuds/Ejunkiet) prompt ‘things you said in your sleep’ + ‘things you said that made me feel real’ — the two ideas just meshed really well in my head so I hope that’s okay :) This first part is mostly backstory and less road trip, but there’s another chapter (or two? three?) coming and those are exclusively road trip-y goodness. I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday!

_This is happening_ , she has to remind herself. She’s got one hand on the wheel and the other glances against the breeze, halfway out the window. The road spears ahead like an arrow.

 

“Hey,” Frank grates from the passenger seat, voice cracking over the word. It’s been awhile since either of them have said anything. “Y’okay?”

 

The sun is dipping low, almost in her eyes. She keeps looking straight ahead.

 

“I’ll let you know,” she says.

 

.

 

Here’s a thing Karen has never said out loud — she wants an after for herself, too. She just never pictured it looking like this.

 

.

 

She needs some time, after everything. Mostly she just wants to sleep, something she hasn’t done on even a semi-consistent basis since moving to the city. It’s almost alarming, waking up to sunlight the morning after Father Lantam’s service, a full thirteen hours after she’d slipped into bed the previous night.

She’s still tired, but it’s different. It’s more superficial, not like before when she was exhausted down to her core.

Karen hasn’t felt this close to normalcy in a long time.

 

.

 

Matt and Foggy give her as much space as they can. She doesn’t want to go back to the place where Matt had lied to them, the place that drove them apart, so she gently suggests that they start fresh. A newer office, maybe, something more centrally located. “As long as my name’s first on the door,” she teases, and laughed when Foggy reminds her that was his idea in the first place.

 

They can’t afford to hire her on salary, at least not right away, so she starts out freelancing. It’s not exactly financially stable, but it works. It feels good, making her own schedule, filling her time with other things besides work — Dinah’s business card has been burning a hole in her wallet for months, so Karen decides to make use of it. They go out for drinks a couple times a month. Dinah almost always offers to pick up the tab, and Karen thinks they might be friends, at least as close as the two of them can get.

They never talk about Frank.

She thinks about him more often than she’d like. In her darker moments, she wonders why the hell he’s stayed away after everything — Fisk, the Bulletin, a Daredevil copycat,  _ Matt  _ rising from the goddamn grave — but she knows it’s useless to wonder. He could be dead, for all she knows. She comes close to asking Dinah about it one night, but swallows the words down with her beer. If he’s dead, he’s dead. If not —

(Sometimes, she wonders if she imagined the moment in the elevator. It’s just fragments — blood smeared down the side of his head, his skin warm beneath her fingers and her pulse singing in her throat,  _ we’re alive, we’re alive _ .)

Sometimes, Karen wonders if he was ever real.

 

.

 

Page, Nelson, and Murdock take on a mid-tier insurance company that’s been illegally denying clients’ claims up and down the state. Low-profile, compared to Wilson Fisk, but it still feels good when they win. Matt’s showing up to work on time these days, sans the mysterious cuts and bruises, and Foggy always remembers to bring her coffee on the days she’s in the office. 

Karen just holds her breath, and waits for the other shoe to drop. 

 

.

 

“You ever just — want to get  _ lost _ ?” Dinah asks a few weeks later, already a couple drinks in. Her cheeks are slightly flushed and she grins like she’s embarrassed when Karen glances her way. “I’m talking truly, completely lost. Like, legitimately off the grid. You know what I mean?”

“I think I do,” Karen replies, tipping her own drink back.

Dinah pushes back in her seat. “Like that book that was big a few years ago —  _ Wild,  _ that was it. You ever read it?”

“My brother did,” Karen says. “Assigned reading when he was in high school. He got really into it, though — he went through this ‘wilderness’ phase for about a month afterwards, watched all these survival skills videos and researched the best backpacking gear, all that stuff. He was even planning to hike part of the Appalachian Trail that summer.”

“Did he?” Dinah asks.

“No.” Karen fixes her eyes on her beer, on the condensation beading down the side. “No, my dad decided that renovating the diner was more important. I told Kev to go anyways, but — he was a good kid. Never could say no to my dad.”

Dinah doesn’t say anything. Karen feels the weight of her gaze, and shifts slightly in her seat. She’s still not used to the way Dinah looks at her sometimes, like she’s peeling her apart, waiting to see what spills out. It’s less intense, less calculated than before — Karen remembers how exposed she’d felt, sitting across the table from her in the Homeland briefing office.  _ Just a bit of gentle intimidation.  _

It’s not intimidation she sees in Dinah’s eyes, when she turns. There’s something familiar there, obscured by the dim half-light of the bar. Understanding, maybe. Dinah blinks and glances away before Karen can quite place it. 

“You should hike it,” Dinah says.

Karen laughs. “Sure, I’ll do that.”

“I’m serious.” Dinah glances at her sidelong. “Off the grid, Page, off the whatever, just  _ go.  _ Get out of the city for a bit.”

Karen takes a pull of her beer. It’s not like she hates the idea of taking some time off — her weekly schedule is pretty fluid, and she’s long overdue for a vacation. But what the hell would she do? She tries to picture herself lounging on a beach somewhere, all the time in the world and nothing to do with it. The thought makes her palms itch. She thrives when she’s busy, when she’s  _ doing.  _ It’s when she slows down that things start to go sideways. 

“Where would you go?” she asks, deflecting. 

Dinah’s lips twist. “Somewhere far away from here. Whatever the opposite of New York City is, that’s where I want to be.”

“Fair enough,” Karen says. “I hope we can both get there, someday.”

“Me too,” Dinah sighs, and Karen watches the lines of her face soften, an almost-smile dancing along her lips. A comfortable silence settles over them as they finish their drinks, and Karen lets herself sink into it.

She picks up the tab.

  
  


.

 

Karen doesn’t think about him, until she does. It’s a small, stupid thing — she goes to open her window and her gaze snags on the empty sill, the thin layer of dust gathering there. There’s some spotting on the wood, from where the rose pot had leaked, and she has to close her eyes for several seconds, breathe until the swelling ache of missing him has subsided.

The thing is — of all the people she’s lost, Frank was the first to come back. She’s not sure if she’ll forgive him if he stays lost this time.

.

 

Spring arrives, everything green and blooming. It’s no longer dark when Karen wakes up in the mornings, so she starts jogging a couple days a week, carves out a route that takes her along the water. She runs until her chest starts to ache, then runs a little further. There’s a street market on the weekends that she make sure to loop through, vendors selling fresh produce and breakfast burritos and local coffee. 

Freshly cut flowers, too. She never stops at those stands.

Karen’s never exercised regularly in her life, so Matt and Foggy give her a curious look when she tells them she’ll take the two flights of stairs instead of riding the elevator up with them at the new office. Foggy asks if she wants a standing desk when he catches her pacing back and forth while working on her latest piece, and she regularly offers to do coffee runs to the joint that’s a few blocks down the street. 

It feels good, taking care of her body, cultivating strength and feeling like herself in her own skin. She feels better than she has in years. 

“You look good,” Matt tells her one morning. “Not that you didn’t before,” he sputters, doing damage control, and Karen just sits back and smirks. “I just mean — you seem happy.”

“You look like you could kick Matt’s ass,” Foggy chimes in cheerfully, and laughs along with Matt, the whole room bright with the sound. 

She’s happy, she is. It’s just — 

.

 

“Can you talk?” she croaks over the phone. She’s only had two drinks, but her cheeks and palms are warm, and the words are thick in her mouth. “Figured it’d be okay, now that you’re not my boss anymore —”

“Karen, what — oh, shit.” Ellison sighs, the sound of it crackling. “Shit, it’s today, huh.” 

“Bingo. I forgot how freakishly good your memory is. You do sudoku?” 

Ellison’s quiet a moment. She’s really not sure why she called him, and not Foggy or Matt, or Dinah — maybe because he’s seen her like this before, hurt and anger unspooling out of her, tangled into something ugly. He’s seen all the messy parts of her.

“I don’t know what to say,” Ellison’s voice splinters her thoughts. “I’m really sorry, Karen.”

“Five years,” Karen says, past the knot in her throat. “That should be enough time, right? To get over it? Every goddamn year, it’s the same song and dance. Drink, cry, drink some more. I’m — fucking tired, Ellison. I’m tired.” 

“I know,” he says. She can hear the concern threaded through his voice, and as selfish as it is, she wants that. She wants Ellison to play the surrogate father, act worried or tell her it’s going to be okay or even yell at her for drinking too much. She wants him to care so fucking badly it feels like her chest might crack in half.

“Listen,” he says, like he can read her mind, “I’m not your father, and God knows I’m shit at giving advice to my own kids, but — I care about you, Karen. This thing you’ve endured — you’ve gotta stop punishing yourself for it.”

Karen chokes on a laugh, or sob — hard to tell through the thickness in her throat. “How? It was my fault, Ellison, everyone knows. Everyone. The whole fucking town knows, and my dad —”

“Your dad,” Ellison snarls, “is a piece of shit excuse for a human being, do you hear me? I don’t care if he was grieving, I don’t care. You didn’t deserve to be treated the way he treated you. No matter what happened, Karen, nothing excuses his behavior. You understand me?”

“I don’t,” Karen breathes, refusing to cry. “But I’m trying to.” 

She opens her laptop, after Ellison lets her go, waits for her fingers to stop shaking before she types into the search bar —

  
  
  


.

  
  


_ Hiking the Appalachian Trail.  _ Ten point two million search results. She’s not exactly sure what she’s looking for, but it has to be in there, somewhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm like. stupidly excited to share this fic because I'm having a lot of fun writing it. Thanks so much for reading, and please let me know if you liked it/feed my validation monster lol. The next chapter will definitely feature more Kastle, so stay tuned. :) 
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr!](https://carry-the-sky.tumblr.com/) Come scream with me!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, y'all, a couple of apologies forthcoming:
> 
> 1\. I'm really sorry for the wait ahhhhhh I'm the literal Worst with updating. 
> 
> 2\. I know I said this next chapter would be mostly road-tripping but as it turns out I LIED. Apparently I have to write ALL THE BACKSTORY first soooooo yeah. Apologies x2! As a result this chapter maybe isn't That Great but I felt like I needed this filler before I could move on to the fun road-trippy stuff. 
> 
> BUT this update definitely has more Kastle, so I hope that makes up for everything else. Thanks so much for reading! <3

“So,” Frank says. “Georgia, huh?”

 

Karen fiddles with the radio, even though it’s been nothing but static and shitty country for the last hundred miles. They’re in the middle of fucking _nowhere_ , Arizona, desert and dust and not much else. The highway doesn’t curve or bend with the land here, just cuts straight through like a scar towards the horizon.

 

Something vaguely blues-y crackles over the car speakers. “Georgia, yeah,” Karen says. “They say it’s better to start south and work your way up, this time of year.”

 

“You gonna hike the whole thing?”

 

“Jesus, no,” she snorts. “I’m not —”

 

She darts a glance sideways. Frank’s looking out, way past the highway where dirt and dust dissolve into sky. He’s looking away, and then, abruptly, he’s not.

 

She snaps her eyes back to the road. “I’m, you know. New to this whole thing. Figure I should probably start slow.”

 

Her mouth is dry. It’s the heat, she thinks, that heavy desert kind that parches everything it touches. He’s looking at her but that’s not why her cheeks are growing warm, the back of her neck prickling. It’s not —

 

She feels it, when he turns away.

 

“I think it’s good,” he says. “What you’re doing. Taking some time for yourself — it’s good, Karen. You deserve that.”

 

"Thanks, Frank."

 

They sink into silence again. There’s more they both could say, miles and miles of _more_ , words crowded and pressed behind teeth. Too much to say but not enough to swallow. All she has to do is open her jaw, push the air into words, but she can’t. She can’t remember a time her mouth felt this heavy.

 

Karen stares out the windshield, over endless desert and road and silence, and thinks —

 

.

 

She’d treated the whole thing like an assignment for work. All it takes is research.

 

Hiking the trail is the easy part. Feet to the horizon, just one step after another. It’s all the shit that comes before that’s overwhelming — acquiring the proper gear, route-planning, monitoring weather and trail conditions, training to ensure she can actually haul herself however far she’s planning to go. The last time she was this physically active was back in Vermont, climbing the outcropping of rock behind her house when she needed to be somewhere that wasn’t home. (She rolled her ankle, once, catching her heel on an exposed root, and sat up there as the sun dipped behind the foothills, waiting to see how long it would take Paxton to notice she was gone.)

 

Her jogging routine is fairly consistent already, so it’s easy to start doing it every morning, and Foggy surprises her by donating a brand-new and unused stairmaster to the cause. “New Year’s resolution present from Marci to herself,” he explains when he comes over to help move it into Karen’s apartment. “We — found other ways to exercise.”

 

“My ears are officially bleeding,” Karen grumbles, thankful she can’t see his face past the large piece of exercise equipment they’re hauling up her stairs.

 

“Yeah, well, my — everything is bleeding, this thing is so goddamn heavy, so now we’re even.”

 

Karen waits for her lizard brain to wake up. She picks a start date, spends the better part of two paychecks on gear. Breaks in her new hiking boots. This wild idea of hers is no longer just that — she keeps waiting for it to hit, for the fear and doubt to coalesce into something real, something menacing like those dark thunderheads that build before a storm breaks. A clear warning sign — dangerous conditions ahead, turn back now.

 

She should be scared, but she’s not. She hasn’t been scared for a long time.

 

.

 

There’s a state park just north of the city, an hour away by train. It’s a little uncomfortable, sitting in her hiking clothes on the MNR, so she picks at her backpack straps to give her hands something to do. The city blurs and dissolves into open space, rolling hills that arc and curve green against the sky. Karen almost misses her stop, staring out the window.

 

It’s a Friday, so the trail is mostly hers. She’s breathing hard by the time she reaches the overlook at the top, and stops to re-lace her boots. She feels — better, with sweat slicked down her back and the weight of her backpack anchoring her to the ground. She feels good. The sun is hot, but there’s a thin breeze, and she tilts her head to catch it, eyes shuttering closed.

 

(That night, Karen dreams she’s looking down from a high place, all the world spread out below her. She dreams —)

 

.

 

“Hello?”

 

Her voice sounds far away, a sandpaper scrape of sound in her own mouth. She blinks, then again. Unknown, the caller ID had flashed, and she’d almost rolled over and gone back to sleep, but —

 

“Hello?” she says again, louder this time. “Hello, can you hear me?”

 

She’s about to hang up when there’s a thin, rattling noise on the other end, like someone breathing out, or trying not to. _No_ , she thinks, heart and lungs in her throat, every inch of her crammed into the narrow column of her windpipe. _No, it’s not_ —

 

“Frank?” she whispers.

 

“Karen —”

 

She can’t hear what he says next, can’t hear anything over the blood pounding in her ears. In the split moment before she answers him, she lets herself be angry, lets it ricochet up her spine and out over her shoulders, whip-fast and bright like lightning. _Why,_ she doesn’t scream, _why do you always do this, Frank, why do you always come back right after I’ve let you go_ —

 

Karen blows out a breath and the fury follows, dissolving out of her as quickly as it hit.

 

“Hey, Frank,” she sighs.

 

.

 

He’s been on the road. Getting away, starting over, or trying to. He’s managed to stay ahead of any and all news by going dark — no cell phone, no internet, local newspapers only. He was just outside of Flagstaff when the Fisk scandal broke and it was in all the papers, big or small.

 

“I should’ve called sooner,” he says, and Karen can almost see him, fingers fluttering rapid-fire against the nearest available surface and the way he works his jaw, that one muscle twitching just beneath his skin as he grinds his teeth. “I should’ve called, Karen, shit, I should’ve —”

 

“Don’t,” she interjects. “Don’t do that, Frank.”

 

When he speaks again she almost doesn’t recognize his voice, how thin and small it sounds. “I'm sorry for —” he chokes off into silence. “For calling so late. Didn't think you'd answer, to be honest.”

 

Karen’s response sticks in her throat. She’s spent all this time wondering, nothing but question marks for answers — where is he, is he alive, is he ever coming home — and she feels it now, the soft gnaw of guilt in her chest. He did exactly what she hoped he always would. He found an after.

 

“Listen,” he’s saying, “I’m, uh — I’m gonna head back that way, yeah? Been out of the city too long, and I’m, y’know — I’m in danger of going full hermit here, Karen.”

 

An image swims behind her eyes, Frank driving through open country, one hand slung over the wheel and maybe he’s nodding along to whatever’s bleeding through the radio static, maybe he’s smiling. Maybe there’s laugh lines around his eyes instead of bruises.

 

Maybe he’s something close to happy.

 

Karen smiles. “Doesn’t sound too bad to me.”

 

“Trust me, van life ain’t as glamorous as it seems.”

 

There’s something sparking, slowly taking shape as they’ve been talking. Frank’s voice is still crackling over the phone, asking if she’s going to be in town next week, and her reply is a reflex, the words up and out of her lungs before she can stop them —

 

“I have a better idea.”

 

.

 

Flagstaff is approximately nineteen hundred miles from Springer Mountain, the southernmost access point for the Appalachian Trail. Twice the driving distance from New York, but Frank’s heading back east anyways, and — she wants to see him. She wants to be the one to decide when and where he comes back into her life. That’s what she tells herself, on the five-hour flight down to Arizona. Five hours to replay their conversation in her head, turning his words over and over to convince herself that she’s not making a colossal mistake.

 

She almost doesn’t see him, scanning the sea of faces at the airport arrival gate. It’s been half a year since the incident at the hotel, watching him haul himself up that elevator shaft, watching him leave. His cheeks are fuller than she remembers, half-hidden beneath a full beard, and for a moment she just looks at him. There’s something working across his face, something she thinks she recognizes, but then she blinks and it’s gone. He’s moving towards her, through the crowd, and she’s moving too, pack sliding from her shoulders as her arms twine around his waist and he buries his face in her hair and laughs, a soft-stuttered sound.

 

“Hey,” he breathes.

 

She lets her eyes slip shut and for a moment all she feels is Frank, his arms solidly around her and the sturdy weight of him like an anchor, like gravity. All she feels —

 

Someone shoves past her, jostling the two of them apart and the moment splinters. Karen goes to grab her pack, but Frank beats her to it, scoops low and swings it up over his shoulder.

 

“Still an old-fashioned guy, I see,” she smirks.

 

He dips his head, a crooked grin playing at his lips. “Old habits die hard, yeah?” He hefts her pack and jerks his head in the direction of the sliding doors that lead outside. “C’mon, I’m parked out this way.”

 

Karen waits until his back is turned to let her lips curve into a full smile, then follows him out into the swelter and press of heat.


End file.
